Some are quite easy to fix. For example, meta-descriptions can be added retrospectively and, though it’s not a ranking signal, it should help CTR.

The internal linking issue intrigued me, as the site had nofollowed 103 internal links, which just seems an odd thing to do.

Looking at the site in more detail, it seems that at least some of the nofollowed internal links were to pages such as login pages, which don’t necessarily represent a missed opportunity.

However, though the site had some interesting content around the practice of copywriting – content which should help it attract its target audience, and to help lift other pages on the site, it appears to have been created without much thought for SEO.

The site offers content creation, content critique and copywriting services. You would think the obvious think to do would be to link from these articles to the sales pages on the site, thus helping them rank for target terms.

Indeed, a well-executed content strategy would use internal linking to consistently link to, for example, the copywriting sales page on the site in every mention of the keyword. This would give a strong signal to search engines that that page should be returned for searches on the term.

Instead, very few of the articles have links at all, and those that do are generally linking to other articles. This means that most of the blog content on the site is doing very little to support the sales pages.

Of course, some of this content may attract visitors to the site, but it’s doing very little to help the site’s search visibility.

Here we’ll take a look at the basic things you need to know in regards to search engine optimisation, a discipline that everyone in your organisation should at least be aware of, if not have a decent technical understanding.